SEX ABUSE VICTIMS: SILENCE & DELAY

One question I get from people who have no experience with sex abuse victims is “Why didn’t they tell anyone?” or “Why are they only talking about this now?”

For those of us who work with adults who were sexually abused when they were children, it is no longer surprising or confusing to hear adults talk about their childhood abuse for the first time. As a result of the trauma caused by childhood sexual abuse, very little child sexual abuse ever gets reported (maybe as many as 90% of sex abuse cases go un-reported). It can take years or even decades for victims to come forward and tell what happened to them. Maybe they tell people that they had been abused, but they don’t give details and they don’t really talk about it.

I’ve seen this phenomenon of delayed disclosure in my own work with abuse victims. So many times, I’ve listened to women or men in their 30s or 40s tell me, through tears, how they were raped and abused when still a child – 11, 12, 13, sometimes younger. Astonishingly, when they finish, they apologize for their tears, for struggling, for leaving out most of the details. They explain that it was the first time they ever told anyone what actually happened. It’s like a dam of shame and embarrassment that kept them silent for decades finally breaks.

As dramatic as that kind of conversation is, it is really a good moment, because that is when healing can finally begin – when that person sees that it is OK to come forward and talk about what happened and know the sky won’t fall. That is the moment when an abuse victim starts to become an abuse survivor because they know they have been heard and treated with respect and can put down their burden of shame.